Takeaways from the CCSMG Conference in New Orleans

Takeaways from the CCSMG Conference in New Orleans

Good Customer Service in the Chemicals Industry Is Built on Good Supply Chain/B2B Automation

Last month, Liaison had the privilege of attending and co-sponsoring the CCSMG (Chemicals and Allied Industries Customer Service Management Group) conference in New Orleans. This was a conference unlike any other, with a very close-knit group whose organization and leadership made the event truly worthwhile. CCSMG is spearheading the effort to dramatically improve customer service in the chemicals industry with innovative and well-structured solutions for its members.

The conference had interactive break-out sessions on a number of important topics related to not only best practices for customer service in the chemicals industry, but also for customer service professionals in general. There was ample time for discussion on all relevant topics during the break-out sessions and during the pre-planned social events as well (including a charity event for Children’s Hospital).

One of the recurring themes that popped up in my conversations was the scarcity of resources (IT) for implementing new customer service technologies and for managing existing ones. This is something I frequently hear from customers. Unfortunately, IT is often (always) stretched very thin and its priorities don’t always (rarely) align with our priorities. This leads to delays in supply chain/B2B automation which, in turn, leads to unhappy customers.

The solution here is to turn to an expert and trusted third party to act as an extension of your IT department to implement and manage your supply chain/B2B program. This “managed services” approach offers a number of crucial benefits including rapid onboarding of trading partners, integration of EDI and other file types directly to/from your ERP and other applications, reduced cycle times, better visibility into the supply chain and much more.

Liaison, with our partner Activ Technologies, presented a joint solution for “Harmonizing the Chemicals Supply Chain.” This solution, tailored for the chemicals industry, provides automation and increased efficiency for complex chemicals supply chain issues such as delivery forecast automation, terminal warehouse automation, bulk tank replenishment, increased visibility into the supply chain and rapid onboarding of EDI/ChemXML/EDIFACT trading partners (SLA’s of ten days or less to onboard new trading partners) and is delivered via our expert managed services. The entire offering is built on Liaison’s world-class integration platform: ALLOY™ Platform.

(View our infographic for a diagram of the architecture we share with Activ Technologies to jointly deliver our value-added chemicals industry solution.)

The bottom line is that without timely implementation and expert management of customer support technologies, your customers will never enjoy the benefits these technologies have to offer.